Tag: crime

4 Reasons Gun Control Can’t Solve America’s Violence Problem

The gun-control paradigm—the idea that the solution to American violence is more laws restricting guns—is unhelpful.

Gun control doesn’t work. Indeed, any statistical connection between gun policy and violence is tenuous. But even if gun control was effective, it would still be flawed.

Gun control burdens the free exercise of the constitutionally-protected Second Amendment right to bear arms, so it’s subject to compelling legal challenges and is flatly rejected by many Americans. In addition, the enforcement of stringent gun control invariably inflicts heavy burdens upon other civil liberties—especially in poorer communities and among marginalized populations.

Gun control’s coexistence with the values of a free society is, at best, an uneasy one. But it’s even less viable in the particular context of the United States. Consider the 400 million guns already in private circulation, plus the totally irreversible and ever-increasing ease of the self-manufacturing of firearms. No matter what laws are passed, widespread distribution and access to firearms are (and will remain) immutable facts of American life—especially for people who are willing to break laws.

In this context, it’s evident that gun control cannot solve the problem of violence in this country. The following four observations about American violence suggest some promising alternative paradigms.

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Flat Earther Busted in Freemason Arson Spree

Less than an hour after three Masonic lodges burned in Vancouver, Canada, a suspect appeared to take credit for the blazes.

“I just cleaned 3 satanic club houses and nobody could do anything,” Ben Kohlman posted on Facebook on Tuesday morning.

Kohlman, 42, has been charged with arson in one of the three blazes, and is expected to face similar charges in the attacks on the other two buildings, the Vancouver Sun reported. And although police have not announced a motive in the arsons, Kohlman’s Facebook page contains anti-Freemason attacks that he shared from conspiracy pages, particularly pages about flat earth theory.

The incident wouldn’t even be the first time in recent years that a flat earther attempted to burn down a Masonic lodge. An Australian flat earth convention went off the rails in 2018 when an organizer was accused of the same crime.

Flat earthers believe—wrongly—that the planet is shaped like a disk and that malevolent figures are trying to trick people into believing they live on a globe. But the conspiracy movement has not reached a consensus about who, exactly, is behind the nefarious plot. While some flat earthers blame the government or invoke anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, others falsely accuse the Freemasons (a fraternal society) of concealing the earth’s true shape.

Conspiracy theories about groups like Freemasons are not without consequence. The group has been falsely accused of secretive schemes, leading to Freemasons’ persecution by the Nazi regime, during which fascists linked the fraternity to Judaism in order to allege a “Jewish-Masonic” plot.

Mark Sargent, a prominent flat earther who does not advocate arson, told The Daily Beast that Freemasons had attracted some flat earthers’ attention because the group had the reputation of being a secret society, while still maintaining a public presence.

“A large section of Flat Earth members are grounded in the general conspiracy world, which means they are always aware of different societies that have been accused of keeping world secrets,” Sargent told The Daily Beast via email. “I feel bad for the Masons because they are by far the most public of the secret societies. The lodges in the U.S., for example are usually large, stone, easy to spot buildings, and are in just about every town you can think of.”

Also easy to spot were the three buildings around Vancouver, all of which burned in the early hours of March 30. Although no one was injured, one building was completely destroyed. Approximately 40 minutes after the last fire, Kohlman wrote his Facebook post bragging about “cleaning satanic club houses,” CTV News first reported.

It was unclear on Thursday whether Kohlman, who was arrested in Burnaby, has a lawyer.

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If The Answer To Every Question Is ‘White Supremacy,’ Someone Is Lying To You

According to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2018, there were 182,230 attacks against Asian people. Every race except for Asians was most likely to be victimized by someone of their own race. Asians, however, were most likely to be victimized by a black person. 27.5% of attacks against Asian people were committed by black people, compared to 24.1% by white people and 24.1% by Asian people. Just 7.0% of these attacks were committed by Hispanic people.

Representing 13.4% of the U.S. population, black people are vastly overrepresented among perpetrators of violent acts against Asian Americans, making the “blame white supremacy” line ever more challenging for the opportunistic Left.

What makes matters “worse” for the Left is that several attacks against Asian Americans have been shared widely on social media, further contradicting their claim that anti-Asian violence is unique to white Americans. For example, security cameras recorded an attack committed in New York, in which a 65-year-old Asian woman was brutally beaten in the street, reportedly by the later-identified and arrested Brandon Elliot. Elliot is black.

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Court Rules It’s Not Rape If Woman Gets Voluntarily Drunk Before Sex Assault Happens

In one of the most ridiculous, yet atrocious decisions by a court we’ve ever seen, the Minnesota Supreme Court threw out a rape conviction this month because the woman who was raped had voluntarily consumed alcohol prior to being raped. This case paves the way for legal rape so long as a woman voluntarily consumes alcohol or drugs with her rapist before the assault occurs.

The court’s unanimous 6-0 decision is plain and simple —  “a person can’t be found guilty of sexually assaulting someone, who is mentally incapacitated due to intoxication, if that person became intoxicated by voluntarily ingesting drugs or alcohol.”

Read that again if you need to, it is true.

The court’s decision stems from the case of Francois Monulu Khalil. Khalil was convicted of rape and sentenced to prison in 2019 but challenged his case all the way to the state’s highest court.

According to the details of the case, Khalil met his victim in 2017 when she was just 20. The two went on a date and the bouncer denied her entry into the bar because he deemed her too intoxicated. Khalil and another man then invited her back to “a party” that turned out to be non-existent.

The victim testified that she blacked out and woke up on the couch to find Khalil raping her. She told him to stop but Khalil refused, telling her, “But you’re so hot and you turn me on.”

Khalil has been in jail since 2019, but thanks to a highly controversial state law and the court’s ridiculous decision, he could soon be a free man.

The court overturned Khalil’s conviction because state law dictates that a person cannot be considered “mentally incapacitated” and incapable of consenting to sex if they are intoxicated on which were substances “administered to that person without the person’s agreement.” 

This law is not just in Minnesota either. According to The Washington Post, a majority of US states – 40 states, as of 2016 – have similar laws which treat intoxication as a barrier to consent only if victims became drunk against their will.

“Victims who are intoxicated to the degree that they are unable to give consent are entitled to justice. Minnesotans who experience unthinkable trauma deserve to see the Legislature take action on this immediately,” Democratic state representative Kelly Moller said, according to USA Today.

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U.S. murder rates increased by 30% in 2020

The U.S. murder rates were up dramatically in 2020 by numbers the country has not seen in decades.

“Homicides rose sharply in 2020, and rates of aggravated assaults and gun assaults increased as well. Homicide rates were 30% higher than in 2019, an historic increase representing 1,268 more deaths in the sample of 34 cities than the year before,” said a study conducted by philanthropy group Arnold Ventures and the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice.

The study also found that aggravated assault was up 6%, gun assaults were up 8%, and motor vehicle theft was up 13%. However, there was a decline in robberies by 9%, residential burglary was down 24%, and drug offenses were down 30%.

The study said that “urgent action is necessary.”

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